1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to recognition processing for image data.
2. Description of the Related Art
In recent years, it has become popular to summarize, manage, and store information in customer service businesses by using electronic data. However, for collecting the information from customers in these operations, paper is still widely used because of its high portability and universality.
To convert data presented on paper into electronic data, a scanner device for converting the content presented on paper into an image serving as electronic data and a recognition device of recognizing characters or the like in the image and of converting them into meaningful data are necessary.
Traditionally, scanners, which are used to convert an original document into images, are connected to computers as peripheral devices and operate only in accordance with programs in computers. These days, some apparatuses that have scanners include versatile central processing units (CPUs) and user interfaces so that the CPUs can execute programs, in addition to a program of controlling the apparatuses. In this case, it has become possible that the apparatuses perform various processing, in addition to scanning, by themselves.
Furthermore, with this feature, it has become possible that scanners execute character recognition programs and utilize the scanned image as meaningful data by themselves, in addition to converting the original documents into the scanned images.
For example, a multifunction peripheral (MFP), which is a device that combines several functions (e.g., scanning and printing) into one unit, can have an additional function of printing recognized addresses on cards or envelopes by incorporating into the MFP a process of recognizing characters from a document image and then converting them into character codes.
When an MFP to which a hard disk and a network function are added is used as a database storing read documents, recognizing the content of a document allows the MFP to extract a keyword relating to the content from the character strings and to exploit the keyword as an index for searching.
This case, however, has the following problems:
Problem 1: Since a CPU incorporated in an apparatus has only a low processing speed, the time required for performing character recognition processing is inevitably very long. Since a memory that can be used is limited, some processing cannot be executed, thus resulting in insufficient performance.
Problem 2: Since programs that can be stored in the apparatus are limited, processing is inevitably limited.
To address Problem 1, a method (hereinafter, referred to as Method A) of transmitting an image to an external computer connected to a network, making the external computer perform desired processing, receiving the result of the processing, and using the result is proposed in, for example, Japanese Patent Laid-Open No. 2002-269253.
To address Problem 2, a method (hereinafter, referred to as Method B) of storing programs in a server connected to a network, dynamically downloading a necessary program into an apparatus, and executing the program is discussed in, for example, Japanese Patent Laid-Open No. 2003-084929.
For Method A, however, there is a problem in which because a document image obtained by scanning is transmitted in its entirety the transmission of the image is burdensome to the bandwidth used in a network when the image has a large size. In particular, if a user attempts to process a color document with high resolution, an image with a large size (several megabytes (MBs) to a dozen or so MBs) is transmitted in the network because a compression ratio cannot be increased above a predetermined level in order to avoid image degradation in text.
For Method B, no transmission of an image is required, so that the bandwidth used in the network does not have burdens. However, an insufficient performance problem resulting from the limitations in the power of the CPU and the memory resources remains unsolved.